Book Event - 'A Fabled Land' - Mesopotamia Station

Legendary rugby photographer and celebrated
journalist team up to tell high country station’s legendary story.

If anything could rival Peter Bush aka Bushy’s
love of rugby, it’s Mesopotamia — the magnificent and historic South Canterbury
station which lies in the Rangitata high country, hard against the Southern
Alps.

Bushy first crossed paths with the Mesopotamia
runholders, the Prouting family, almost 50 years ago, when they ended up
rescuing his brand new rental Land Rover from the clutches of the mighty
Rangitata River. He and a hunting mate had pitched their tent on what they
thought was a track, the heavens had opened during the night, and they’d got
caught in a flash flood. With the water level rising, they had to abandon the
submerged vehicle until it could be towed out once the water level had dropped.
Despite this ignominious start — he’s been the butt of endless "North Island
townie" jokes ever since — Bushy has remained firm friends with the family.

Bushy’s photos — taken on a series of visits over
the years— beautifully capture the great musters of days gone by, the dignity of
the shearing gangs, the majestic country, and the distinctive and determined
characters who’ve been part of the great Mesopotamia story.

In this stunning new book, A Fabled Land,
celebrated journalist and Cantabrian, Bruce Ansley has teamed up with Bushy to
reveal a vivid portrait of this truly special, awe-inspiring and seductive
place, where 150 years of station life have been played out within the great
amphitheatre of the mountains.

Ansley has brilliantly captured the spirit of this
great sheep station: from the early pioneers who first braved its harsh winters
and searing summers to the ingenuity and drive of the present-day owners, the
Prouting family. His description of the landscape is at once poetic and
immediate and magnificent, taking the reader right to the heart of the high
country and offering a rare insight into the highs and lows of high country
life.

This is a man’s country, where the women who wish
to stay have to hold their own; a country where the past is echoed in the
present and in this fascinating book we ride the ‘curious tide of extremes’ that
farming embodies: the heartache, the exhilaration, the grandiose, the bombastic,
the gracious, the laconichumour.

In this epic country, the mountains have as much
personality as the station’s various owners, from the Proutings, who have now
been there for the past 70 years, stretching right back to the station’s
founding in 1860 by Samuel Butler in 1860. Escaping the demands of his
over-bearing English vicar father, Butler arrived full of wanderlust in 1860,
just 24.

The vast, empty and silent landscape cast its spell over him, as it
has done with the subsequent custodians. Butler was soon to purchase a large
holding, which he grandly named Mesopotamia, the Greek word for the land
between two rivers. Butler did well out of ‘Messie’, as the Proutings call the
station. When he sold his holding of 24,000 hectares three years later to
return to England, he doubled his money. Butler immortalised
Mesopotamia in
his novel, Erewhon, which he wrote after returning to Britain.

And, A Fabled
Land features another ‘character’ too: the Rangitata River, which flows like
a rogue throughout the book. Ansley says that he, like generations of
southern folk, grew up captivated by the intoxicating romance of the vast and
remote high country stations and the rich stories that lay in the land. He’d
wanted to write the Messie story for some time butwould only do it with the
Prouting’s blessing. “I knew about the Proutings as masters
of their mountain
kingdom, successors to Samuel Butler, and I knew too that they were a very
private family, wary of outsiders.

“Bushy had once produced an unpublished
photo essay on the Mesopotamia muster and I asked him whether he’d be
interested in a book. He jumped at the chance. without mentioning that he’d
known the family for half a century. When I eventually spoke to Laurie
Prouting about a book he said, “If you’ve got Bushy with you it’ll be OK by
me.” And that was the first I knew of Bushy’s history with the station. So, in
hindsight, it was meant to be.”

Ansley says that he also had a strong
sense of how the book would come together. “I didn’t want the book to be a
straight, linear history. It needed to also to relate the modern Mesopotamia to
Butler’s embryo station, retracing his footsteps, comparing his life with the
present, constantly referencing the station’s history while dealing with its
present. ”

The new generation’s fight to restore the station’s fortunes
against the backdrop of hardship and this harsh, beautiful country is a
dominant theme, he says. “Last year current run holders, Malcolm and Sue
Prouting returned a razor-thin profit of $13,000. They were delighted: they were
back in the black."